Author of Original Petya Ransomware Publishes Master Decryption Key

[LASER_oneXM]

...some quotes from the article:

The author of the original Petya ransomware — a person/group going by the name of Janus Cybercrime Solutions — has released the master decryption key of all past Petya versions. This key can decrypt all ransomware families part of the Petya family except NotPetya, which isn't the work of Janus.

Authenticity of Petya decryption key confirmed
Janus released the master key on Wednesday in a tweet that linked to an encrypted and password-protected file uploaded on Mega.nz.
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Malwarebytes security researcher Hasherezade cracked the file yesterday and shared its content:

Congratulations!
Here is our secp192k1 privkey:
38dd46801ce61883433048d6d8c6ab8be18654a2695b4723
We used ECIES (with AES-256-ECB) Scheme to encrypt the decryption password into the "Personal Code" which is BASE58 encoded.

Kaspersky Lab security researcher Anton Ivanov tested and confirmed the master key's validity.

Decryption key is useless for NotPetya victims
This key won't help NotPetya victims because the NotPetya ransomware was created by "pirating" the original Petya ransomware and modifying its behavior by a process called patching. NotPetya used a different encryption routine and was proven to have no connection to the original Petya.

Janus is not the first ransomware author/group who released his master decryption key. The TeslaCrypt group did the same in the spring of 2016. Last year, Janus also hacked the servers of a rival ransomware author — Chimera ransomware — and dumped his decryption keys.

 

[Dean Winchestere]

Why they release the key i'm wondering? Honestly if people can't secure their PC's they need to learn the hard way. As long as they keep bailing people out, they won't change their computing habits. People need to start using things like appguard, and voodooshield. Or better yet, how about the antivirus venders incorporate their tech into their solutions?

 

[orthonovum]

Why they release the key i'm wondering? Honestly if people can't secure their PC's they need to learn the hard way. As long as they keep bailing people out, they won't change their computing habits. People need to start using things like appguard, and voodooshield. Or better yet, how about the antivirus venders incorporate their tech into their solutions?

Yeah that is pretty interesting that they released the key, could it be that they felt guilty? do they have a conscience or maybe they thought they were going to get caught? pretty odd.

 

[Malware Person]

Surprising! I have not seen this before. Interesting that the author of the ransomware actually turned to the light side and released the keys.

 

[bribon77]

That is good news